A continuation of the previous class, Basic Chinese Conversation IV is designed to strengthen and fine-tune learners’ command of the following grammar points through substitution drills and exercises based on real-life scenarios:
- 是……的 — Spotlighting specific details of past events, such as when, who, where, and how. For example: “When did you come to Seattle?” “How did you get to work?” “Who cooked breakfast yesterday?” and “Where did you get these apples?”
- 次 — Describing how many times an action has occurred.
- 得 — Describing the result or degree of an action.
Relevant vocabulary will be introduced each week and integrated directly into the drills and exercises, allowing students to practice new words and grammar in context.
Your instructor
Chien Tsai has extensive experience teaching Mandarin Chinese to adult learners. His academic interests range across comparative literature, Chinese literature, and Sinophone cinema, and his teaching rests on a simple principle: difficult things need not be made obscure in order to be taken seriously. He values clarity, accessibility, and the small cultural distinctions that often make the difference between merely knowing a language and actually understanding how it lives.
His current research turns to an old and stubborn question: what do we mean when we speak of “the soul”? Bringing the Homeric epics into conversation with ancient Chinese philosophy, he examines how the two very different intellectual traditions imagined the inner life of human beings and, more importantly, how their similarities and differences speaks to the peculiarities of our own time.
Selected Publications: Book Review, A Passage to China, Sinophone Studies